• New Horizons on Maelstrom
    Maelstrom New Horizons


    Visit our website www.piratehorizons.com to quickly find download links for the newest versions of our New Horizons mods Beyond New Horizons and Maelstrom New Horizons!

Musings on The Setting of Pirates of The Caribbean

O

OddjobXL

Landlubber
With others working diligently on historical aspects present in PoTC Build mod I thought I might start setting forth exploring the PoTC setting. After all, if there's an "all ships" ahistorical fantasy option, including zombies and skeleton pirates, one could do worse than looking at PoTC for inspiration.

A game based on the films should probably be set after the maelstrom of the third film. The seas are wild again, Calypso's roaming free, and the East India Trading Company's suffered a great setback. Each of the pirate factions is still intact and striving once more constrained only by the "more guidelines, really" set forth by the Pirate Code. But don't let Cap'n Teague hear you call them that, aye?

What should the map be? Rutters are key to the world of the tall ship sailor, once out of sight of land it's what you have to go by to find where you're going. It names places, indicates tides and favorable winds, coastlines and landmarks. Only two maps make an appearance in PoTC but both tell us a great deal about the setting.

One is the map of the East India Company which appears to be a very historical rendition of the known world circa the early 1700's. Of note is the context. The E.I.C. seems to be the single biggest power in the world of the Pirates and it goes about, quite businesslike, in taking over and running anything it can get its hands on. While there was a historical counterpart, this one seems more modelled on a modern multinational that certainly doesn't restrict its business to the East Indies but goes wherever the government of the British Empire goes and also seems in the position of ordering her troops around without an intervening national officer corps of any standing. Governers and admirals bend knee to the economic might of The Company.

What of the other colonial powers and great trading combines? In the films we only hear of Spain mentioned as an independant entity as Jack Sparrow is accused of impersonating a Spanish naval officer (as well as a British one and a man of the cloth among other things...). France is mentioned only in the very first line of the Letter of Marque that Beckett offers to Will Turner. It begins as follows (best as I can make out - the image in the books are small and in ornate caligraphy): "George By the Grace of the God of England, Scotland, France and Ireland. King, Defender of The Faith..." and after this it's hard to make out. Now this would seem to indicate that France has been conquered and is now part of The Empire (and the holdings of the EIC by implication). Or England's still pressing her claims to her ancient medieval holdings on The Continent - which sounds odd but someone better versed with actual historical Letters of Marque could say whether that's traditional for this time period. Of Portugal, Holland and others there's silence. The only Europeans among the Pirate Lords are English, Spanish and French as well. It could be in this alternate universe the other colonial powers were subsumed, marginalized and conquered. Russia is, perhaps, represented by Barbossa himself. He's the Pirate Lord of The Caspian Sea. While he doesn't sound particularly Slavic he's a very clever fellow, far too clever just to happened to have become Jack Sparrow's First Mate by accident. It could be his stereotypical Pirate brogue is an affectation and it's also clear he's very comfortable with globe trotting, both in the temporal world and the mystical one. He leads the way to Singapore after all and doesn't so much as blink when going over The Edge of The World. Is it a coincidence that Barbossa sounds so much like Barbarossa?

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Hitler threw 183 divisions into [Operation Barbarossa], while the Nazis faced 170 divisions, which represented 54 percent of the Red Army's total strength. Subsequently, the German armies were to occupy a line reaching from Archangel on the White Sea to Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

The other map is far more curious: the map of Sao Feng. This is a round, mystical, map made up of many moving rings. It shows the way, in the last film, to The Farthest Gate that leads to the Lands Beyond Death. It, like most maps, probably shows the way to many other places. To nearer gates? And the landmasses in the first ring do seem to represent the coasts of China's known world of an earlier era - from Australia to India to the Horn of Africa mostly lower latitudes but a bit distorted to include more of China's coastline. I count four outer rings. Could these represent the paths other spirit worlds when spun into different combinations? The Chinese know of many hells. Unlike our technocratic, European, E.I.C. map Sao Feng's does show creatures both fantastic and real in its margins. It even includes a lunar cycle calendar.

Next: The Subtext of The Cosmology (in brief).
 
Notations on the maps:

From The Complete Visual Guide (DK Books 2007):

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Lord Cutler Beckett is a loyal member of the East India Trading Company. He has great ambitions for the company and has a map of the world painted on his office wall to illustrate them. To further the achievements of the company he aims to rid the seas of piracy by finding the Dead Man's Chest. Then he can control Davy Jones himself, and rule every ship, sailor and creature of The Seven Seas.

Beckett's plans need to be constantly updated. He employs an artisan to make daily changes to the map. As ships bring reports of the company's growing power and new discoveries, he paints in the blank sections of the map and adds new ports, countries and towns.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

From The Secret Files of The East India Trading Company (Disney Press 2007):

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Charting Our Territory

Since our arrival in the New World, the East India Trading Company has been charting the territory and researching the most effective trade routes. Lord Cutler Beckett (may his good deeds on this earth be rewarded with a graceful eternal sleep) made it his duty to fill in the blank areas on the world map. I have obtained, here, by way of an expert Company cartographer, small reproductions of the large scale world map that the good Lord Beckett had created. You will see in the map in its earliest stages below. Notice that the New World is hardly recorded - like a great and wonderful beast emerging from a thick fog, ready and waiting to be tamed.

And the taming happened quite readily. You will see in the second reproduction above, that as the Company made greater headway in the Occidental regions, more routes were established, and the world itself appears, on paper as in reality, more structured and more uniform. It benefits from the rigors of clear borders and the glory of order. Chaos, in this version of the map, is on the verge of extinction. We have nearly succeeded in remaking the full world by our own design.

Pirates, Ye Be Warned!

Your days are numbered, as evidenced by the glorious completed map to your left! The civilized world is quickly transforming your own, cleansing it of its wild treachery!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

From The Complete Visual Guide:

<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Anyone planning that most difficult of voyages - a trip to The Land Beyond Death, must first seek Sao Feng's navigational chart to the Farthest Gate. Its unique series of rings means that locations are never fixed. As Tai Huang points out - it may not be as accurate as modern charts - but it leads to more places.

Strange symbols and images appear in the mystical meanderings of this map's contours - sometimes a dragon emerges, a harbinger of great fortune in war. Traditional navigators may founder, expecting the chart to contain solid fact. They are missing the point - for only the truly lost can find a place that cannot be reached.

The Riddle in the Middle: "Over the edge, back, over again, sunrise sets at the flash of green." This ancient riddle accompanies a central depiction of an intrepid junk. This picture, circled by a diagram of phases of the Moon, will point the way to the gate.

When the tiger lines up with your destination a safe passage is assured. At the time this map was created, this big cat was seen as a devourer of evil spirits and was believed to be a lucky omen.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
 
Should this be in the Burning Brig or is this relevant to the PotC Build mod? In the PotC Build mod we're trying to add more of the PotC film world to the game, most notably by rewriting the original main quest to function as a prequel to the films and by the Curse of the Black Pearl film quest currently under development. We could do some brainstorming on what other changes we could make to add some more interesting and fun movie tie-ins. Examples could be the addition of the EITC with an EITC headquarters, EITC soldiers and officers, etc.

Also it would be interesting to take our thoughts on the <a href="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10925&hl=" target="_blank">Pirates of the Caribbean 4 prequel script</a> that we're writing here into account with our developing of the Build mod. Of course the prequel story that we're writing there is quite different from the prequel story we have in he Build mod, but the main parts: Jack becoming a pirate, the burning of the Wicked Wench and the deal with Davy Jones are all in place in both versions. We could assume that both stories are "legends" about Jack's past and it's not entirely clear which of the two is actually true.

In our prequel story, the French, Spanish and Dutch all have a part to play. A French captain is the one who finally gets Jack to officially become a pirate. Together they search for a treasure in Mexico, which is held by the Spanish. There is the sacking of Nassau, which is a Dutch port and eventually things escalate between the EITC and its Dutch counterpart, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) in Indonesia. Plenty of interesting possibilities there that cannot all be explored in that one film script, but could perhaps also be partly incorporated into the Build mod.
 
I decided to put it here because there may be people who are interested in the film but who might leave the technical ins-and-outs of the Build Mod itself to the pros and coders. So if I wander too far off the beaten track, or my musings fire other insights, they can be inserted into this dialogue. As for the script, well, I think I'm going to focus on generating some kind of coherent cosmology based on the existing films alone. The new script can take or leave whatever it likes from this thread. Odds are since we aren't talking about a very detailed or comprehensive setting many aspects of it and conclusions one might make about it aren't going to be universally agreed upon. While I can suggest that Europe's really quite a different place in this alternate universe (or at least the perspective that's stressed in the films), for example, it's another perfectly valid point to say that the movies say much less about the world than could be said. One can assume that the setting is more historical than alternate reality in any aspect that's not deliberately touched on. I tend to take a different view given the importance of both the supernatural (at least in the "chaotic" uncharted and wild places that the EITC seems intent on taming and bringing order and their version of civilization to) and the ahistorical and seemingly nigh omnipotent role of the East India Trading Company. Both pose questions and problems.

So what comes here might run contrary to aspects of the script on one hand and might touch on far more than is realistic to consider as practical suggestions for Build Mod. It's a thread of musings and speculations though hopefully somewhat grounded in an emerging PoTC canon. The goal is to provide an interesting point of view on how things might work in their world in a broad sense. One thing that's certainly inspired me are the similiarities in some of the suggestive undercurrents of the setting between Pirates of The Caribbean and the aspects of the setting of Mage: The Ascention from White Wolf's World of Darkness. More differences in details and focus than shared features but the idea of a technocratic one-world beaurocrative, secretive, money-hungry (and initially monotheistic before becoming atheistic) machine out to run the world and driven by their versions of "Reason" and "Order", one which uses maps for the mystical purpose of defining the world and thus nailing it down in predictable and controllable patterns, and a scattering of old run down and less than lily white mystical traditions prone to mistrust and infighting, from destroyed and suppressed cultural traditions, trying to resist them rings a bell. Now, Pirates from the films are hardly intellectuals or idealists or organized rebels but they do strike me as the very bottom of the barrel: fallen nobles, escaped slaves, disgraced clerics, drunken doctors and desperate and greedy shanghai'ed sailors from around the world. Contrast the population of Port Royal and Tortuga (or Singapore) and keep in mind colonial structures of the time. You see forces bringing their own brand of law and order and salvation to the world but hardly bringing any immediate benefit to those who end up in chains to the EITC as either slaves in fact or economic ones.

But like any elephant in a room full of blind men, PoTC will benefit from many hands exploring different angles of the setting. It is very vague but also highly suggestive...
 
I personally think that in PotC 2 and 3 they went rather far with the supernatural weird element. I would want any stories taking place before or after these films to be more realistic and less fantastical. Not to remove the fantasy element altogether, but when the fantasy becomes normal, it loses its special place in this world. That is why I would prefer a world that is mostly rooted in realism. After all, even in the PotC world you wouldn't encounter the Kraken and a ghost ship or two on each trip from Holland to England, right? <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

What I imagine is this: Before the beginning of the PotC films and the rise of the EITC, the world is pretty much a normal realistic world. Calypose has already been bound to human form. The only difference is that some myths turn out to be true. Most people will go their whole life without seeing the weird things in this world, but some people do. That's how the legends are born. Then the EITC comes along and wants to rule the world. But they find out soon enough that the fantasy things in this world can be used to prevent them from taking over the world's economy. This is what would happen at the end of our prequel story when the VOC and Flying Dutchman destroy pretty much all the EITC fleet.

That is when Beckett knows that he must get the supernatural on HIS side to achieve his ends. So he goes to search for Davy Jones' heart and we all know what happens next. I think that Davy Jones' locker and the maelstrom battle at the end of PotC 3 should be pretty much the furthest the stories should go in the realm of the fantastical. Perhaps stories taking place right after AWE would also have a lot of fantastical stuff taking place because Calypso has been freed again, but I think that this should decrease very rapidly. It is the last frenzy of weirdness before the inevitable rise of industrialism and the end of the romantic and fantastical world of pirates. The various nation's navies are becoming more organized, piracy is in decline and eventually the United States of America will appear. The world is changing and the mystical no longer has any place in it.

So basically first the world is a normal world with some fantastical elements (PotC 4 prequel story and CotBP), then as the EITC is pushing the world to rule the world, the fantastical elements increase (DMC and especially AWE). At the end of AWE and begin of its possible sequel, the world is as crazy as it can get, but as the navies rise and the US is established, the fantastical makes place for the industrial.

Mainly what I think is that if the fantastical is considered normal in the world of PotC, then it loses its fantastical element and becomes part of everyday life. So I want to keep the fantastical special. I think that in CotBP Jack actually WAS quite surprised to find there was indeed a curse, although he was perhaps not as surprised as completely ordinary (at that point) people like Will and Elizabeth would be.
 
I think I agree with you to an extent. The daily doings of a person in England or safely tucked away on the "right" side of EITC's civilization probably isn't impacted much by the supernatural. However, given the reaction of Beckett to Davy Jones and the rest is hardly superstitious or even, well, normal - he sets right out to use the fellow and even stations troops aboard his ship, leads to me to suspect the supernatural isn't unknown to the leaders of the EITC and the civilized world. They simply use it for their own ends and, up until Davy Jones, quietly as possible so their orderly and logical worldview isn't upset by things they can't define, quantify, measure or map. However, it would be an error to state that the EITC is without any mystical trappings of its own. Their symbol are the EIC initials bounded by three crosses and their motto, translated from the Latin under the coat of arms, is: "Nothing can harm us when God leads us." Now I doubt anyone would mistake the EITC for the Spanish Inquisition in motives or goals or behavior. But it is yet one more thematic contrast between the order of the EIC and the chaotic jumble of beliefs, exotic religions from all ports of call, and outright superstitions and mariners tales that makes up the cosmology of the generic pirate (though likely each pirate started out with a more culturally conventional outlook there's no denying these international PoTC pirates seem to have their own unique culture as a whole - well networked globetrotters with their own capital city, shared superstitions and even a book of "suggestions", or laws).

And how did Calypso get bound? This element well predates the films and tracks from the first council of the first Pirate Lords. A pirate council which obviously never existed in our world (nor does the supernatural as far as I can tell). If someone wanted a date, even though there are still plenty of questions thata could be raised about it, that this alternate earth went off the rails it would be the binding of Calypso. That's when the Pirates attempted to bring order to their treacherous seas and, instead, the EIC being far more organized took far more advantage of it than the Pirates could.

Things may start getting less mystical, as you suggest, after Calypso is released but remember she was out there before to be bound. And history wasn't identical even back then.

Still, what's the first thing Barbossa and Jack go after once Calypso is bound? A fat merchant ship? A Spanish coastal town? No - they're after Cortez's fountain of youth. Seems that magic is still out there to me. You can't really take that away too much from PoTC and still have it be PoTC. It becomes something else.

That said, I do agree that magic isn't a daily thing (aside from superstitious mariner's issues which may or may not have bearing on the reality of PoTC) but at the higher echelons and the lowest of society I suspect it's known and channelled to some degree. Managed. Along the lines of a secret society most likely in the civilized world, in order to keep it from disrupting the safe, tidy, universe the EITC strives to create. And individuals in the outcast fringes of society know it was well and address it, in minor ways, with myriad approaches and superstitions.

One common thread seems to be that magic isn't innate to people or the natural order. Magic is part of other beings and other worlds. You need to bind them or appease them in order to control what it is you seek to master.
 
But when did Beckett "start believing in ghost stories"? In our prequel script we have Beckett witnessing the Flying Dutchman appearing from under the water and sinking most of his fleet. I dare say that is enough incentive for him to believe in ghost stories. I think that is when he decided that he must find a way to put these supernatural powers to his own use. Which should probably be the main difference between Beckett and the bad guy in a sequel to AWE: Beckett intended to use the supernatural things to his advantage and failed. The AWE sequel bad guy would try to rid the world of the supernatural things. And he would succeed. Or perhaps this wouldn't even be the bad guy. Perhaps it'd be an EITC good guy now with the bad girl being Calypso. At least in the first half of the story.

I think that the mystical and fantasy things in the PotC world are because of what Barbossa calls the "heathen gods". As time progresses, more and more heathen gods leave the world, finally leaving the world behind in a "normal" state. Back when Calypso was still free, the sea was a playground of crazy events and it was monsters galore. Fed up with this all, the pirates were welcome to accept Davy Jones' help to bind Calypso and rid them of all of this. The EITC then ended up taking advantage of this void. So then the pirates decided to set Calypso free and managed (end of AWE). The full-blown weirdness at sea has returned (begin of AWE sequel). Everybody quickly decides that is not what they want either so all sea-faring nations try and rid themselves of Calypso once and for all. That would be the first half of the AWE sequel story. Then the second half would show what would become of the world after the last of the heathen gods have been banished: The various nations start waging war on each other, a new superpower, the US, arises and the golden age of piracy declines into virtual nothingness.

So basically the "first" PotC film, the prequel to CotBP would start in a world that is pretty much normal, but where myths can turn out to be true. Throughout the films, things escalate into complete weirdness and over-the-topness, but it would end in a world that is pretty much normal and where the myths are reduced to being only myths. That would give the films a sense of possibly being true.
 
That wouldn't be an approach I'd necessarily disagree with. But once things are back to normal the era of PoTC ends. Now, how Beckett started becoming a pragmatic man in the face of otherworldly horrors, in your script, is up to you. The films as best as I can recall aren't so precise themselves. I still rather like my idea of Masonic Orders or Illuminati, something like that, actually running the show from behind the scenes. Knowing there's magic and actively trying to either use it, in their own way, or drive it out of existence as a disruptive influence. But that too is a product of personal speculation and nothing we could pull directly from the films.

Still, the background of all of this seems to be a war between order and chaos, businesslike fact and raw imagination. Our only compass leads to a heart's desire and our pirate's map takes us to other worlds that can only be reached when you're as lost as they are. Compare that to Beckett's map making and the EIC's goal of knowing and pinning down every detail to be thoroughly exploited for profit and to drive away chaos and unpredictablity as bad for business.

I do agree that's it's possible for the EIC to become the good guys in the story and the pirates to become the bad guys. In fact, both sides strike me as utterly selfish, vicious, and amoral as groups. Only individuals on either side seem to have admirable traits and those individuals act questionably and treacherously as a matter of course when the need strikes them. But once one faction does take up a truly righteous mantle, as with the death of magic and the flight of the mythic, PoTC would cease to be PoTC. Some elements just define what makes the setting unique.
 
Some sort of secret society running it all behind the scenes sounds interesting, but not very piratey. Strikes me as being out of place here. More something for National Treasure. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/unsure.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":?" border="0" alt="unsure.gif" />

Indeed when the mythical element is gone from the PotC films, they are no longer PotC. Therefore the film in which it all ends would be the last film. We see how the world changes from the piratey romantic chaos from our imagination to the industrialized world we know now.

I agree that in the current PotC films there are no real good and bad buys. The EITC are portrayed as bad guys, while they're just a corporation. The pirates are portrayed as good guys while they're thiefs and plunderers. So I think that in the final PotC film, eventually the pirates should get the role they have in real life: nasty bad guys that the world is better off without. With the only real pirate good guy, Jack Sparrow, remaining as only true pirate in the world: a free man, but a good man.

I think this was one of the original ideas they had for AWE: the golden age of piracy coming to a close and being replaced by an industrial world. However, it seems to me that they didn't really explore this thought thoroughly enough in the film, so I would like to have one sequel to AWE where the real end of the golden age of piracy is shown.

My personal thought would be to have five PotC films in total:
1) Prequel to CotBP: Introduces us to the mythical pirate world and the main characters and explains some things that are not made clear in the other films.
2) CotBP: The fantasy setting takes a much more upfront role, we meet Will and Elizabeth.
3) DMC: The Davy Jones backstory begun in 1) continues.
4) AWE: Will and Elizabeth's story comes to and end. Calypso is freed and the world turns into massive mythical chaos.
5) Sequel to AWE: The end of the mythical world of PotC, which is replaced with the industrialized world we know now. I imagine seeing paddlesteamers sailing around at the end of the film at what will become New York city. The definite end of the golden age of piracy of our imagination.

Because the last film would end with a completely normal realistic world, it gives the impression that all that has come before might have been true. Of course it now no longer is the world of PotC, but maybe, just maybe, there still ARE some true myths left in this world. Might be something for the post end credits scene to show one more hint of a true myth, even after the world has become what appears to be the world we all know.

I also like the thought of having five films in total, instead of the "usual" six constituting two trilogies. It would always feel somewhat incomplete, like there are still more stories to tell. But these we would leave up to the audience's imagination.
 
Hey everyone. Interesting thoughts, you fail to disappoint when someone asks to be thorough <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> . You may have discussed these points above, i just skimmed over, and i will read it thoroughly later.

I have had this idea in my head for a bit about the sequel, do you remember when Barbossa was giving a speech in AWE to the Bretheran court? Where he said mastery of the seas came by the sweat on a mans brow, and the strength of his back. I think we should alter things a bit. History would be different with a sea goddess controlling the seas. She could have wrecked the battle at Trafalgar, or rigged it so the French and Spanish won. Just keep in mind that technologies such as paddlesteamers that came at this time might not in POTC.

Another thought about the fountain of youth, what if it doesnt just make you immortal to sail the seas on earth? What if you are actually taken to a different sea. Like when they went over Worlds End. Therefore they could sail the seas forever and industrialization of the world would be non existent in the fountain. Remember THERE IS NO SUCH THING as the fountain of youth so it is up to our imagination what it looks like. So no one can say any of us is right or wrong.
 
what if that alternative world where you can sail the seas forever IS the PotC world, in a way, and the real world is the one on the other side? that sentence is wonky on all sides, i know, but it's just the thought of flipping things around.
 
Morgan, are you saying we alter history in the POTC films? Change it because of what the pirates have done, and how Calypso rules the seas again? Because things were magical back then, and as the world steps toward industrialization we lose that belief in magical elements. So really Calypso will not be captured again. I think there should be a place where the pirates go to live off their lives without meddling in the industrial revolution. Maybe we can show something at the end like: 2009, there you see the black pearl hidden in a secret cove that cannot be found by those except who already know where it is. Also there will be other pirate ships that have managed to survive and sail there. And we will see Jacks skeleton his arms wrapped around two wenches and a bottle of rum in his hand. That could be a way. Of course we could make it completely different if we wanted with magical elements.
 
Or the Black Pearl is anchored in a cove which you can't find unless you believe in the world that it now exists. Where these pirates have all gone off too. Sort of like this world split off from our world a long time ago and only people who believe in its existence ended up there.
 
Hmmm.... good ideas, very...out of this world. I think that they should retire to somewhere that cannot ever be found. Maybe a secret tunnel under the southern icecaps. The tunnel collapses and seals it off from the rest of the world. The point though is that the pirates are accepting that their time is ending, the age of industrialization is upon them. Defeating Beckett, and releasing Calypso has only delayed the inevitable. I think a moral of this film should be that through exploiting our planet as such we do these days we lose the things we love. The world shrinks. Everyone is intertwined.
 
Though piracy did not end. It still exists, maybe not in the manner that it did back then but there are still crooks out there on the seas. But the classic pirate, well, it is an interesting idea that they would disappear into a world of their own. Because the age of the true pirate did come to a quick end once the military was unleashed on the seas. It would make sense then in our account of events that they would have found somewhere to escape. It is definitely worth exploring.
 
Interesting. Perhaps we could incorporate that into an AWE sequel. But I think it should be a side story, not the main story. I think that AWE was quite over-the-top in fantasy-ness already and for any sequel, I would want at least half of the film it to be rooted in reality. So the first half of the film could be Calypso being at large and a completely out-of-this-world amount of fantasy things with sea monsters all over the place, weird meteorological occurrances, etc. But an end would come to this halfway into the film when somehow most of the fantasy disappears from the world. Perhaps some of the pirates would indeed go into some sort of imaginary mythical pirate world of their own (one of the other rings on Sao Feng's map), leaving the "real" world behind as the ordinary world we now know.

As for the Fountain of Youth: I always imagined that eternal life would be something that Jack would always want, but could never get and eventually he would need to come to grips with being mortal. In AWE he very much fears death, but I think he should leave that fear behind him at some point. If he does achieve eternal life, then he would never need to come to grips with his fear. Therefore he would retain that fear forever, which I don't think makes for good character development. How about in the end they do manage to find that portal to this other world where the pirates can spend their final days away from the industrialized new world, but Jack then decides to stay behind as the last real pirate in the real world, knowing that eventually he'll die? That could be the second half of the film: The pirates have left this world, the world is going more industrialized, but Jack's still there, trying to influence the events in the world to his advantage. The only question would be: What WOULD Jack's goal be at that point?

I think that the modern pirates are nothing like the romantical view of pirates in the golden age of piracy that exists in our imagination. I would hate to end the last PotC film with a view of actual real-life pirates. That would be the most depressing ending EVER! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/piratesing.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":shock" border="0" alt="piratesing.gif" />
I <i>would</i> like to show some paddlesteamers as one of the last things in the film before the end credits. That would be an image that does show that the golden age of piracy has ended, but in a much more pleasant way than real pirates would. Then we in the post end credits scene, we can show that the golden age of piracy might have ended, but some sort of trace of it still exists. Perhaps Sao Feng's map remained in the real world, enabeling the portal to the imaginary pirate world most golden age pirates fled into to be opened once again. It might be fun to show at the end of the end credits some sort of modern captain with Sao Feng's map, trying to find this mythical land of pirates. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />
 
this all sounds like a bit of a pirate paradise. kinda interesting. i did find a video on youtube once where someone made a really realistic animation of zooming in on google earth and finding an island shaped like a skull and crossbones. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile2.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":))" border="0" alt="smile2.gif" /> it looked prefectly real.
 
How is this for a possible general outline for an AWE sequel?

Jack has Sao Feng's map, Barbossa has the Black Pearl, both search for the Fountain of Youth. Calypso has been freed and the world has erupted into complete mythical chaos.

1] Film could start with the opening scene proposed by me <a href="http://www.piratesahoy.com/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=10925&view=findpost&p=217425" target="_blank">here</a>
2] Jack and Barbossa are on the island, searching for something piratey. Possibly this is where the Fountain of Youth is.
3] The Fountain of Youth somehow cannot bring them eternal life, but there is a clue to the entrance to a different universe they could visit.
4] Some pirates go search for it, possibly Jack, Barbossa or other pirates.
5] Along the way, they encounter a lot of mythical crazyness. Killer storms, sirens, possibly even Scylla and Charibdis. We go all-out ancient Sinbad/Odysseus here.
6] The EITC is getting fed up with this new crazy world and a new leader emerges who wants to bring an end to this. [HOW?]
7] Possibly the EITC joins forces with some of the pirates (Jack?) in order to rid the world from Calypso once and for all.
8] Eventually they succeed. Calypso is put into the alternate universe and a lot of the original pirates go there as well. This is Jack's chance of eternal life, but eventually he decides against taking it.
---
9] The world has now changed into the normal world we all know. Jack is still there with the Pearl.
10] Rise of the navies and the United States. We need here the biggest fleet-to-fleet battle ever put to film. And it should not be fantastical, but instead very realistic.
11] End of the film: Paddlesteamers.
12] Post end credits: Modern captain with Sao Feng's map. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":cheeky" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" />

Above is a very general outline based on the thoughts expressed above. It's just meant to give us something to work with and should in no way be similar to our final ideas. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/no.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":no" border="0" alt="no.gif" />
 
Clever Pieter, very clever. I think making it more fantastical however would be a bad move. The thing about the sequels was that it had the highest completely like or completely dislike strain ever. People either love it or hate it. While the first film people would think it was okay at the least. Going sinbad/odysseus in my opinion would not be a good move, its kind of like disneys rumored plan to go to atlantis. I say less fantasy or the same as AWE. We should not be making an upward incline of fantacism starting with the prequel and continuing up and up. Old Salts idea is more down to earth about what i am saying about how those who believed went there. Also i think Sao Fengs Map would play an important role in finding this hidden paradise.

I think we are throwing more ideas around on the sequel then on the prequel. Partially because we have alot of facts to go by in the prequel. By all means if you have a little idea PLEASE POST IT!! It might influence somebody else's idea to make an even better one. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

BTW Happy New Years!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top